Only the space of this conversation can establish what is addressed, can gather it into a “you” around the naming and speaking I. But this “you,” come about by dint of being named and addressed, brings an otherness into the present. Even in the here and now of the poem– and the poem has only this one, unique, momentary present– even in this immediacy and nearness, the otherness gives voice to what is most its own: its time.
Paul Celan
But every time the sun makes a gold scrim across the trees, which is any morning without cloud, there is simple amazement, a desire to hold it in place, but it goes, and comes again, and goes, and so forth, so one is, finally, glad for the repetition which erases the fear of only once, once only.
Ann Lauterbach
I have been reading the poet Ann Lauterbach’s The Night Sky, Writings on the Poetics of Experience since slightly before classes let out; both of the above quotes come from there. I find this reading so much more interesting and enjoyable than the research articles I read for class. Maybe I am in the wrong field, or maybe I find comfort in the abstract. When I first started teaching whenever I was tense (pretty much all the time then), I read Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. For years I have seemingly searched out difficult writers obsessing over multiple volumes of their works. I am never sure what I take from them; nothing that can be summed up in a succinct paragraph. Yet for years images or ideas I have gleaned from them come back to me. I suppose they make up the constellation of my thinking. I like puzzling out the ideas and concepts embedded in the essays while luxuriating in the beauty of Lauterbach’s prose. Most of the book is concerned with writing, poetry specifically, although the last two essays came out of the 9-11 attacks. Lauterbach lived near the WTC and about a month after the attacks she wrote her response. They are, like most her work, lovely and complex.
Today is the last day of school, my seniors finished two days ago so I have been dismantling my room for the summer cleaning. The downtown admin has threatened to throw away all personal items left in the rooms, so everything has to be taken down and stored for the summer. No wonder some teacher’s rooms resemble empty rent a storage boxes all year, too much trouble to keep putting stuff up each year only to have to drag it all home at the end of the school year. I have to hang around until two to help with the graduation practice, then tomorrow meet them all down at the Drum to watch them walk across the stage. They try to be so blasé about it, but tomorrow they will be nervous and excited as if they were going on a first date. Even the seniors are cute in their youthfulness.
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